Elastic
Verified“Dutch on paper, American in practice.”
- Listing
- NYSE: ESTC
- FY25 revenue
- $1.48B
- Cloud mix
- 46%
- Intl revenue
- 44%
34 = midpoint of Control 40 & Data 27
Sovereignty Quadrant
Control ↑ who owns & governs the company · Data → where your data lives. Every dot is a company — click to open it.
Every number below traces to 13 sourced facts across 7 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 3 open questions hold confidence at 82% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
50
Elastic N.V. is genuinely incorporated in the Netherlands with a statutory seat in Amsterdam, so it is a real EU legal entity reachable by EU law — this is a meaningful correction to the common belief that Elastic is Delaware-incorporated. But the company describes itself as a distributed company with no principal executive office, and operational control sits with US-based management. EU law reaches the parent, yet the operating reality is US-centered, placing it in the mid-band rather than high.
Why 50? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Incorporated as a Dutch N.V. with statutory seat in Amsterdam
Wikipedia (Elastic NV), citing Dutch Chamber of Commerce registration · as of 2026-06
Files as a Netherlands-incorporated company with the US SEC
SEC EDGAR / TradingView coverage of 10-K · as of 2025-06-09
Describes itself as distributed with no single principal executive office
Wikipedia (Elastic NV) · as of 2026-06
Control & Ownership
30
Voting and economic control is overwhelmingly US-centered: NYSE listing under ESTC, USD reporting, and an institutional register dominated by US asset managers (Vanguard, BlackRock, D.E. Shaw, AQR). Founder/CTO Shay Banon retains only ~6% with sole voting power — no controlling EU bloc. International revenue is a minority (~44%), so the economic majority sits outside the EU. This is foreign-controlled by the rubric.
Why 30? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Top holders are US asset managers
Fintel institutional ownership for ESTC · as of 2026-06
Founder/CTO holds a single-digit, non-controlling stake
StockTitan (Schedule 13G/A, ESTC) · as of 2025-08-21
Majority of revenue is generated outside the EU (US-centered economics)
TradingView coverage of FY2025 10-K · as of 2025-04-30
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
25
Elastic owns no data-center infrastructure. Elastic Cloud runs exclusively on the three US hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud). EU regions and EU data-residency options exist, and Elastic offers SCCs and encryption, but customer data hosted in EU regions still sits on US-provider infrastructure subject to the US CLOUD Act. This is the classic EU-region-on-US-hyperscaler pattern, scoring in the low band, with a small uplift for genuine EU residency choices and a clean record on government access claims.
Why 25? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Elastic Cloud is hosted entirely on US hyperscalers
Elastic Cloud Hosted regions (official docs) · as of 2026-06
EU data-residency is available but on third-party provider regions
Elastic Trust Center FAQ · as of 2026-06
Elastic states it has never given governments direct access
Elastic Trust Center FAQ · as of 2026-06
Operations & People
30
Operations are US-anchored despite distributed staffing. CEO Ash Kulkarni is US-based, leadership (CFO/COO, CPO, CRO) is largely US-centered, the company reports in USD, and it lists Mountain View, California as a base. It is genuinely a globally distributed workforce (~3,400 employees, ~44% international revenue, Dutch-rooted founding), which lifts it off the floor, but the management and reporting centre is the United States.
Why 30? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
US-based CEO; US listed as a headquarters base
Highperformr company profile (Elastic) · as of 2026-06
Reports financial results in US dollars
TradingView coverage of FY2025 10-K · as of 2025-04-30
Globally distributed workforce, Dutch founding roots
Wikipedia (Elastic NV) · as of 2026-06
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
3 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
What share of customer data actually resides in EU regions vs US/other regions?
Elastic offers EU residency, but real EU-hosted data share is undisclosed; if most data sits in US regions, infra exposure is worse than the EU-option framing suggests.
- ?
Exact geographic split of the ~3,400-person workforce (EU vs US vs rest)?
Operations score assumes US-anchored leadership with distributed staff; a heavily EU-weighted workforce would nudge operations up.
- ?
Precise current free-float ownership by US vs EU institutions?
Top holders are clearly US asset managers, but a full EU-vs-US economic split would sharpen the ownership score.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
SEAL-style mapping only — the framework targets cloud service providers; applied here as an analogous sovereignty read, not a certification.
Strategic
NYSE-listed, USD-reporting, US-managed; strategic direction sits with US capital markets and management, not the EU.
Legal & jurisdictional
Genuine Dutch N.V. (EU-reachable parent), but US-centered operating control and SEC filing obligations pull it toward the US.
Data & AI
EU data-residency options exist but only on US hyperscalers (AWS/Azure/GCP); EU-hosted data remains exposed to the US CLOUD Act.
Operational
US-based CEO and leadership, no EU principal executive office, USD reporting; distributed workforce softens but does not reverse this.
Supply chain
Core cloud delivery depends entirely on three US infrastructure providers; no EU-sovereign hosting option.
Technological
Dutch-founded, open-source-rooted search/observability technology with strong in-house IP, but delivered on US infrastructure.
Security & compliance
GDPR support, SCCs, encryption, and a stated no-backdoor/no-direct-government-access policy; offset by underlying US-provider jurisdiction.
Environmental sustainability
No Elastic-specific EU sustainability data reviewed in this pass.
EU alternatives
Open-source fork of Elasticsearch; can be self-hosted on EU-sovereign infrastructure, but the project itself originated in the US (AWS/Linux Foundation) — sovereignty depends on where you run it.
French search company — EU-controlled, but a consumer/web-search product, not a drop-in enterprise search/observability platform like Elastic.
EU-incorporated, EU-listed sovereign cloud provider; relevant if the priority is EU-owned infrastructure to host a search/observability stack rather than a managed Elastic equivalent.
How the method works
Methodology v2 (provisional): the score is the midpoint of two axes — Control (who owns and governs the company) and Data (where your data lives and who can reach it). Each axis is scored only on verified evidence; unknowns reduce confidence, never the score. Every input below is sourced; the weights and judgments are open to challenge.
Spotted an error? Every claim is sourced — challenge it and we correct the record.
- 2026-06-12 — Initial golden profile, authored from primary sources (human + AI review).
Report Incorrect Data
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Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology